Erin Harrington reviews Dance Nation, written by Clare Barron, directed by Alison Walls, at the Court Theatre, Saturday 23 September 2023.
The Court Theatre’s fierce production of Clare Barron’s 2018 play Dance Nation invites superlatives. The show, as directed by Court Theatre AD Alison Walls, offers us a bonkers, vulgar, hilarious, vulnerable take on A Chorus Line. It features full-bodied adults in colourful leotards playing ambitious tweens in a competitive, suburban dance ensemble. It’s a lion-hearted celebration of the intense witchiness of puberty and female friendships, and the emotional, embodied, sweet, feral contradictions of girlhood. It nails the simultaneous absurdity and seriousness of dance. It honours the way a love for the performing arts can light a fire underneath you and connect you to the stars, and can also burn you out even before you grow breast and hips. It recognises all those who were reading The Babysitter’s Club and Flowers in the Attic at the same time and saw no contradiction. It understands what it means to have a body and be seen in that body. I feel quite strange during this beautifully pitched show, as if an open secret about, I dunno, everything was being outed onstage. I post an Insta story at half time: this show rules.
For the most part we’re in a dance studio in Liverpool, Ohio. It is run with an iron fist by Dance Teacher Pat (James Kupa), an obsessive small-town tyrant no life outside of dance, bent on charming and frightening his charges into excellence. He wants to take his troupes to regionals then nationals with a dance-drama routine based on (of course) the life and spirit of Gandhi, then bring home a trophy to add to the brightly lit cases that frame the studio’s full-length mirrors. The dancers, talented Amina (Ash Williams), yearning Zuzu (Keagan Carr Fransch), frustrated Connie (Kalyani Nagajaran), dreamy Maeve (Jacque Drew), determined Sofia (Rosalind Lay-Yazadani), ferocious Ashlee (Lizzie Tollemache) and sweet-natured Luke (Tom Eason), the sole boy, are going to give it their all before they age out of the pre-teen comps and find themselves back at the bottom of the pile. It’s on.
The narrative arc of the show is pretty simple, but the emotional arcs of this pre-teen dance troupe, much like their rich inner lives, are much more complex. Friendships for life swell and burst, ambitions take over, periods start, dreams are stoked, nascent sexual fantasies are shared. The show charts the nuanced weather systems of friend groups with impeccable insight. We see the realities of home, often represented through a variety of mothers (all played wonderfully by Kira Josephson, who also choreographs). Occasionally, the characters’ adult selves speak to us with nostalgia, or sadness, or compassion for their younger selves. But we also get to see, or perhaps be reminded of, the power of dirty language, and of the nascent sexuality and power in being on the cusp of adolescence. Suffice to say that adults can say and do truthful things on stage that younger people can’t, for (like) legal reasons, and it’s wild to watch.
The cast, who are a range of ages and body types, are consistently excellent: ferocious, vulnerable, silly, aching, sweet, ambitious. I love watching the way they channel the young characters through their adult bodies, not least in the absurd choreographed sequences. They navigate the show’s tilts between naturalism and surrealism with care, never slipping into mockery while riding the waves of pre-teen intensity, where everything is important and big, everything is deadly serious. It would be worth seeing this show again just to focus on the faces of different actors, let alone revisit a filthy, tour-de-force monologue from Tollemache about joy, ambition, identity and sensuality that feels like the entire show’s Rosetta Stone.
The show is also thoughtfully and cohesively designed. Mark McEntyre’s dance studio set feels grounded and intimate. It is given further depth and texture by a lighting design, from Giles Tanner, that balances the magical with the mundane. William Burns’ dynamic sound design drags the drama of the stage into the subjective sense of the off-stage world. The costuming (Daniella Salazar) is also impeccable: of course Maeve would have an amazing sweater with a giant tiger on it; of course Liverpool Dance Works’ in-house uniform features teal, branded cropped hoodies. My only frustration overall is that some of the many scene transitions feel a little heavy, particularly in the first half, and this flattens out some of the energy; a lost opportunity, perhaps, given the possible space for lyrical movement?
I really appreciate that Dance Nation is an obvious departure in programming for the theatre. In terms of historic offerings, this feels like a Forge show given the mainstage treatment, and I think that’s a good thing. It is also a treat to see something so contemporary. Over the last few years there has been a clear narrative about what the Court Theatre will (or should) bring, and be, when it eventually moves into its new central city home as an anchor project in the Performing Arts Precinct, and I think that shows like this could help fulfil that promise.
For now though, I hope that this show finds its audience, as hand on heart I think this year the theatre has done a poor job of communicating what its shows are about and who they are for. And that audience is out there: anyone who was a theatre kid, a dance kid, a stage challenge kid, a young athlete, a dreamer, a weirdo with a passion for horses or wolves; anyone who got their period at the wrong time, who loved and hated themselves, who felt the tsunami-like capaciousness of being young and vital; anyone who twerked to the Pussycat Dolls before making secret potions with their friends; anyone.
Dance Nation runs until 21 October 2023.
Flat City Field Notes 